Plot Overview

Plot Overview

Plot Overview

Plot Overview

Plot Overview

Plot Overview

The Scarlet Letter opens
with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The
nameless narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem,
Massachusetts. In the customhouse’s attic, he discovered a number
of documents, among them a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet,
gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript,
the work of a past surveyor, detailed events that occurred some
two hundred years before the narrator’s time. When the narrator
lost his customs post, he decided to write a fictional account of
the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is
the final product.

The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a
Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the
town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the
scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker
that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a
scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he
never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost
at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had
an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal
her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with
her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy.
On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by
the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s
father.

The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who
is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth.
He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity
to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years
pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl
grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they
live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt
to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale,
a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to
stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and
suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological
distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister
and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide
his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects
that there may be a connection between the minister’s torments and
Hester’s secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can
learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers
a mark on the man’s breast (the details of which are kept from the
reader), which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.

Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new
tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and
quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community.
One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother
are returning home from a visit to a deathbed when they encounter
Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for
his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale
refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the next
day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. Hester
can see that the minister’s condition is worsening, and she resolves
to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding
to Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.

Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because
she is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans
to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to
flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They
will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense
of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down
her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without
the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople
gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon
ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of
their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale,
leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing
before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with
his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet
letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl
kisses him.

Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later.
Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened
to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the
scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her
charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who
has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her
own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two
share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet “A.”

SparkNotes is the best! "The Scarlet Letter" has the most confusing Olde English I think I've ever had to muddle through. Thankfully, SparkNotes broke it down for me and explained what's going on when, 'cause you just can't understand with all the beating around the bush!

This SparkNote was amazingly easy to understand, I just wish that someone would rewrite the book with modern English. But anyway, the quizzes are SUPER (Let me stress that super) helpful. Since the chapter summaries are so well written, I was actually able to come to... Read more→